Susan, hearing the story of how your dad died brought tears to my eyes, even though you are at peace with it now. I can’t imagine how utterly devastating the sudden news of losing your dad in that manner must have hit you. I’m glad you have beautiful memories now. I can only imagine how long it took to work through your grief.

Yes, very odd that your mom hung on until 11 O’clock. That’s so cool that she saw him waiting for her. My mom told me the 2 days before she passed that she “saw people.” The look in her eyes appeared fearful to me so I wasn’t sure how to address it. I first asked her if they were still living and she told me no. I then asked if they were nice people and she told me yes. Okay, that was a big ‘Phew…’ in my mind because my mom hated her father, he was extremely abusive and she cut ties with him years before she died. So, knowing they were nice people ruled him out. I then went on to ask her if she saw our dad? Mom shook her head no, no, no… then said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” She seemed upset and I felt so bad that I seemed to upset her. Maybe she was seeing someone else and she became frustrated because I wasn’t able to figure it out? I will never know. It took me a bit of time to not beat myself up for upsetting her, others said I probably didn’t upset her and she was just frustrated because I wasn’t able to decipher who she saw… who knows, right?

I was the oldest of 5 children, so my brother was 8, sisters were ages, 6 yrs, 4 yrs and 18 months old. We were all affected differently. My brother went into shock and has no memories of life with dad (my brother and I spent a lot of time with my dad) my middle sisters have some memories and my youngest sister was left with no memory of him.

You made a great point, having siblings and others we are close to does help to ease the pain and get through a lot together. To this day, we are all still close and I can credit my mom for that. She may have been strict and hard to talk to in some ways but she loved us all very much and it was important to her that we always stay close, along with working out our issues with the each other (never go to bed angry) was her motto and it worked!